I'm working on a project that requires only the use of regular expression to convert state names (must be case insensitive) to their two letter abbreviations.
I cannot use any sort of development environment or link to any databases or xml or ini files.
Please help!
Since states don't have something regular in them regular expressions is the WRONG tool. I would suggest getting a new project.
However, the only solution (apart from stupid illogical hacks) is to hardcore every state:
s/Alabama/Al/
s/Alaska/Ak/
...
s/Wyoming/Wy/
A list of the states and their abbreviations can be found here.